I want my conservatives to be buttoned up in clean, simple suits. I want them to be stoic, austere, self-assured, calm. Joe Six Pack needs someone to look up to, someone to respect. The GOP has spent all of its energy lately trying dress itself down, to its detriment.

People don’t want Bubba. Even G.W. does his pandering by example, owning a ranch, etc. But every day he wears a suit and tie and makes no apologies for it. The man, goofy as he is, is strictly business, even while torturing the English language.

I disagree with the man’s policies on almost everything, but over the years I’ve learned to respect the man, begrudgingly.

What the GOP has become is just one big BBQ or hoe-down, for the rural folks, but 50% of Americans live in cities, and you can’t run the nations’ government only on the concerns of the rural population. People in cities count, they drive huge swaths of the economy, they matter, they vote.

Joe Six Pack is a nice guy, but he isn’t the only American.

Which brings me to this article in the Wall St. Journal entitled “Obama’s 95% Illusion” which sets out to debunk Obama’s claims that he is providing middle class tax cuts.

Here’s the article.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122385651698727257.html

The irony of how well this article is written made me laugh out loud.

The irony is that the GOP has spent so much time telling Joe Six Pack that anything from East Coast City Slickers is a lie, and that all they need are small-town country songs with single syllable words, etc.

So now the GOP leadership cannot point to the one article that every conservative should read, because it’s written in the “Mainstream Media.”

The Wall St. Journal is part of  “The Elite.”

And we all know that Joe Six Pack can’t trust them fat cats on Wall St. much less the media that writes about them.

The bottom line is the GOP has really let itself go.

It’s a shame too, because i think core conservative ideals about cutting taxes, reducing spending, offering people opportunities not hand-out, etc., etc. are noble in their simplicity.

I really miss the days when the GOP presented themselves as the stoic, wiser counterparts to the foolishness that Liberalism can really be.

Oh well, my favorite flavor Conservatives may never return, but I wish they would and clean up their house — it looks like a trailer park at this point.

Tags: Obama, Conservative, Conservatism, Politics, Taxes, Joe Six Pack

so apparently the band My Bloody Valentine is getting back into the studio (finally)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/sep/25/my.bloody.valentine.new.album

anyway, i’ve seeded pandora with them and am blissing out as code like a monkey

Tags: music, my bloody valentie

So i have a log table that records server status, and what I needed was a query that returns to me only those rows that had status change. That is to say, over time, just show me the times when the status changed.

this query gets me just exactly that — only the rows that represent a change in status from the most recent previous status.

/* main select clause */
SELECT
    A.LocationId, A.ConnectionStatus, A.Comments,
        A.TimeRecorded AS StatusChangeTime

FROM
    /* self-join the table to have a second date field */
    tblNetworkConnectionStatusLog AS A JOIN
    tblNetworkConnectionStatusLog AS B
        ON A.LocationId = B.LocationId
WHERE
    /* only interested in rows of different status */
    B.ConnectionStatus <> A.ConnectionStatus
        /* limited to just the most recent different status */
        AND B.TimeRecorded =
        (
            SELECT
                MAX(C.TimeRecorded) AS StatusChangeTime
            FROM
                dbo.tblNetworkConnectionStatusLog  AS C
            WHERE
                C.LocationId = A.LocationId AND
                C.TimeRecorded < A.TimeRecorded
        )
   
/* this just gets the first status recorded*/
UNION SELECT
    D.LocationId, D.ConnectionStatus, D.Comments,
        D.TimeRecorded AS StatusChangeTime
FROM
    tblNetworkConnectionStatusLog AS D LEFT OUTER JOIN
        tblNetworkConnectionStatusLog AS E
            ON E.LocationId = D.LocationID
                AND E.TimeRecorded < D.TimeRecorded
WHERE
    E.LocationID IS NULL

ORDER BY
    StatusChangeTime DESC

purdy sweet.

9/11 is now long enough ago, that when i read e-mails from the time I am surprised by how antiquated my technology was.

i didn’t know anybody who died that day, thankfully.

*moment of silence*

haven’t we all heard this claim before?

MIT neuroscientists explain deja vu

i am certain that i have heard claims to scientifically explain this eerie sensation that is ironically so banal, but apparently “forming memories of places and contexts engages a part of the brain called the hippocampus.” duh, but these guys “have been exploring how each of the three hippocampal subregions — the dentate gyrus, CA1 and CA3 — contribute to learning and memory”

yeah, yeah, yeah

but honestly, i was disappointed by this guy’s weak-ass example:

“[He] described his own occasional experience of finding the airport in a new city uncannily familiar. That occurs, he said, because of the similarity of modules — gates, chairs, and ticket counters — that comprise airports worldwide. It is only by seeking unique cues that the specific airport can be identified”

of course all airports look similar — there are entire international agencies whose raison d’etre is to ensure just that, so we cattle don’t get lost and so planes don’t need to figure a dozen sets of signage

duh — that ain’t deja vu

i recently experienced a chain of events (noticing a scientific article) that motivated me to post to a blog i maintain and while i was composing the the post i noticed the strange sensation that i have done this before.

weird, hunh?

linky

the blurring effect of the earth’s atmosphere is in large part the reason the hubble space telescope is well, a space telescope. land based telescopes have had to rely on a technology known as adaptive optics in which a reference star is used as a point of reference to adjust for the rivers of air they must see through to observe the heavens beyond.

the drawback to this is the relative shortage of good reference stars in the skies — in particular over the southern hemisphere.

enter the good folks of european souther observatory over at paranal observatory in chile — they have developed a new technique by which they create their own reference star using lasers.

“The Laser Guide Star System installed at Paranal uses the PARSEC dye laser developed by MPE-Garching and MPIA-Heidelberg. The laser beam takes advantage of the layer of sodium atoms that is present in Earth’s atmosphere at an altitude of 90 kilometres. Shining at a well-defined wavelength the laser makes it glow. Despite this star being about 20 times fainter than the faintest star that can be seen with the unaided eye, it is bright enough for the adaptive optics to measure and correct the atmosphere’s blurring effect. “

Full article at ESO here
Full adaptation from Science Daily here

so many processes we employ in our modern world generate heat that goes to waste — from cpu in laptops to nuclear power plant

Orest Symko from the university of utah has found a way to create sound from waste heat and then use that sound to generate electricity

very cool tech http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070603225026.htm

Reuters is reporting today that Dutch students have concocted a powered alcoholic beverage that when mixed with water becomes a “a bubbly, lime-colored and -flavored drink with just 3 percent alcohol content.”

called Booz2Go, the target audience is clearly hikers who want to party after a long day but don’t wanna carry all that fluid around.

ha!

article here

oh how many days seem like this one:

completely self-contained computer pod
http://www.theoculas.com/gallery.html

flat-screen, surround sound, immersive environment

daddy likey — i want one!